Climate Change and What it Means for Humanity

On September 24, 2019 Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (16) delivered a fiery speech at the United Nations climate summit. She said, “We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

While she was speaking thousands of fires were consuming the Amazon rain forest. Glaciers were retreating worldwide—the Alps in Europe, the Rocky Mountains in North America, and the Andes in South America. With all this melting ice sea levels have risen by eight inches over the last century.

The Amazon (sometimes called “the planet’s lungs) is home to three million species of plants and animals being the most bio diverse region on the planet. Four hundred billion trees absorb millions of tons of carbon dioxide yearly. The rain forest emits 6% of our planet’s oxygen while its trees pull fresh water from the ground and cycle it back into the atmosphere. The “atmospheric river” formed brings moisture over the American Midwest.

Unfortunately, 300,000 square miles of the Brazilian Amazon, an area larger than Texas, have been deforested. President Emmanuel Macron of France has called the Amazon fires “an international crisis.” Brazil’s President Balsonaro has rejected international aid to fight the fires believing foreign countries like France “send it {foreign aid} with the aim of interfering with our sovereignty.”

Loggers and ranchers seeking clear land, a policy encouraged by the Brazilian government, set 90% of the fires. Today, Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city has been plunged into daytime darkness. Its hospitals are filled with patients suffering from respiratory distress. What President Balsonaro doesn’t realize is that his problem is a planetary problem for the rain forest in his backyard affects every human being living on this planet.

A recent UN report on climate change shows the severe strain impacted by the world’s oceans which could put hundreds of millions of people at risk while threatening seafood supplies. Since the 1970s the oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat caused by atmospheric carbon pollution and carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas). Consequently, oceanic chemistry has changed. The upper layer of ocean now holds less oxygen and is becoming more acidic. Marine ecosystems can’t survive in this alien environment thus causing the death of coral reefs and other ocean habitats. Sea levels are expected to rise one to two feet into the 22^nd century due to melting glaciers and sea ice.

This is not the first time our planet has experienced climate change. In the past 650,000 years, NASA reports seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat with the last ice age ending 7000 years ago. Those climate changes were due to small variations in Earth’s orbit that altered the intensity of the sun’s energy on our planet. The current warming trend is the result of human activity. According to NASA, “There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.”

Since the late 19^th century the planet’s surface temperature has increased by 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (.9 degrees Celsius) with the five warmest years on record occurring between 2010-2016. The oceans have absorbed most of this heat with more than a .4 degrees F increase since 1969. Data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland losing 286 billion tons of ice per year between 1993-2016. Antarctica lost 127 billion tons of ice per year during that same time.

Its obvious climate change is not a national problem—it’s a planetary issue that can only be dealt with through international cooperation. To accomplish this, the UN needs to be given more power to regulate planetary emissions, provide oversight of the world’s forests, and help deal with the problems that will be caused by flooding along coastlines and the ensuing refugee issues. The human race needs to stop thinking of itself as Chinese, American, Russian, or South African. We are one people living on a planet that could become uninhabitable if changes aren’t made.

Greta recently said, “We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change – and it has to start today.” To do this, nations must turn over a portion of their sovereignty for the sake of their survival. We need to act as if our house were on fire, because as Greta Thunberg says, “It is.”